‘Won’t Back Down’ a historic bomb

Teachers unions are probably thrilled to hear that “Won’t Back Down,” which lays the blame for failing urban schools at their feet, has turned out to be a bomb of historic propotions.

Opening on 2,515 screens last Friday, the drama starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as a determined mom of a dyslexic daughter and Viola Davis as a jaded teacher who had given up fighting the entrenched educational bureaucracy earned a pathetic $2.6 million last weekend. That’s good enough — make that bad enough — to sent it to the top of the “Worst Wide Openings” list (films that opened on at least 2,500 screens) on BoxOfficeMojo.com.

The previous champ? That would be “The Rocker” (2008), the long-forgotten rock ‘n’ roll comedy starring “The Office’s” Rainn Wilson as an over-the-hill drummer determined to make the most of a second chance at fame. It earned $2,636,048 opening weekend; “Won’t Back Down” nosed it out by $33,000.

Folks who follow box-office numbers seem to enjoy pointing out that the “Glee!”-esque “Pitch Perfect,” which also opened Friday, made more than twice as much on one-eighth as many screens (335). Ouch!

And “Won’t Back Down” didn’t even come close to the modest projection, $7 million, from analyst Ray Subers, who wrote, “Distributor 20th Century Fox clearly realized they had a dud on their hands a while ago, and pushed it out without the backing of a substantial marketing effort.”

And this dismal performance came on an upbeat box-office weekend that featured “Hotel Transylvania” setting an opening-weekend record for September. Apparently this was one rising tide that didn’t lift all boats.